


Tag, Hide and Seek, and Other Grown-Up Games

by kisahawklin, soleta



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: sgareversebang, Gen, Mission Fic, Pirates, Team, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-03
Updated: 2011-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:17:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/soleta/pseuds/soleta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missions are a lot like childhood. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you touch the wrong knick-knacks and get sucked into a painting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tag, Hide and Seek, and Other Grown-Up Games

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Not the kind of ship I was expecting](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3585) by pajamas. 



Rodney follows the footprints amidst the six inches of dust down the corridor, hidden lighting brightening as they come and dimming as they go past. Even he can follow these tracks, and this being an Ancient something-or-other he's in the lead, feeling much more at home than following Ronon through the woods, watching him read bent branches and the smell of the wind to get them to the outpost.

The disturbance in the dust leads them into the first door on the right, and they enter a round room with several consoles in the middle and pictures on the walls. Sheppard initializes the consoles without asking, before Rodney can yelp "Sheppard!" at him to keep him from touching things. They all wake up at his touch and make happy lights, not one of them doing anything remotely interesting. "I wish you would stop _touching_ things, Colonel. You know that's going to get you in trouble."

Sheppard shrugs. "Nothing dangerous in here," he says. "At least not for us."

Rodney hates it when he talks like that, like the whole place is sentient and talking to him in his brain. It may even do that, but that doesn't freak Rodney out any less. "I'll remind you that this technology is ten millenia old and there is the distinct possibility of malfunction."

"Nah," Sheppard says. "Everything’s working in here." Rodney can hear the soft hum of complacent and functioning equipment, and is forced to agree with Sheppard.

He hates it when Sheppard does that, and he hates it even more when Sheppard’s right.

Rodney throws up his hands and leaves Sheppard to his communion with the Ancient technology. He glances over at Ronon, who is staring at something on the wall. When Rodney drifts closer, he notices it's one of the paintings. It's a weird painting, one of several tall buildings made out of green brick.

"I know that place," Ronon says. "Lukild."

"This one is of Olesia," Teyla remarks from across the room, and sure enough, when he turns to look Rodney recognizes the gardens and tall buildings from their walk through the city with Marin.

"I like this one," Sheppard says, leaning in to look closer. Rodney moves over, glancing at the keypad next to it before looking at the painting itself. The picture is of green hills in the background, a wide blue river and a sandy beach in the foreground. There's a girl on the beach with a sad face and a long, dark braid hanging over her shoulder.

"What did they say the missing girl looked like again?" Sheppard asks, leaning in a little closer.

"Slight build, long dark hair," Teyla says, and Rodney looks from Sheppard to the painting. Sheppard’s not really listening; he leans forward until his nose is almost touching the painting, for all the world like he’s counting brushstrokes. Rodney leans forward, too, looking for what Sheppard has seen that he missed.

"You can’t be serious," Rodney says when it dawns on him, until he sees the look on Sheppard’s face and realizes that he’s entirely serious. That is Sheppard’s Going To Do Something About It face, and it doesn’t matter that the whole idea is completely ridiculous – Rodney ignores the niggling voice in his head that reminds him that it’s not completely ridiculous, not in the Pegasus galaxy – but it’s critical to make sure that Sheppard doesn’t go off half-cocked.

Unfortunately, that’s when a panel slides back underneath the painting and starts flashing big, urgent red lights at them. Rodney reaches for his tablet and when his hand closes on empty air, he realizes that he left it on the center console.

The flashing looks like it’s speeding up, and Rodney can practically feel Sheppard getting antsy, so he crouches and tries to figure out what’s going on straight from the panel. His Ancient isn’t that good, but it’s saying something about a release, or an escape, and then it starts scrolling _taking countermeasures_.

The painting starts to glow. The girl's face changes, from a blank expression to one that's vivid and confused, fear and hope and worry and a thousand other things written on it.

Sheppard reaches his hand out to touch the frame and Rodney snaps out a " _No_!" at the same time he grabs Sheppard's other hand, intent on yanking him back. His horrified thoughts are full of Doranda, of Carson, and of all the terrible things the Ancients built in the name of the war.

He’s not quite quick enough, and he finds himself staring out at a deep blue river with green hills on the horizon, clutching a handful of angry Sheppard. The girl is gone.

* * *

"Not _again_ ," Teyla says, but her hands are tight on her P90, and there’s worry in her eyes. No matter how often things like this happen, Ronon knows that she always wonders if this time they won’t be smart enough or fast enough to – Ronon grabs his gun, aiming it at the sudden streak of color that materializes into a young woman, her eyes wide and shifting between himself and Teyla.

"Liannir?" Teyla asks, putting a hand on Ronon's arm. He lowers his gun, but doesn’t holster it.

The girl collapses, and Teyla moves to her side to check her breathing and pulse. Ronon looks back at the picture, knowing already what he'll see before he does. Sheppard and McKay are on the sandy beach, looking forward, as if they can see out of the painting. He wonders if they can. McKay's eyes are wide and his mouth open in a look of comical surprise. Sheppard's face is pinched in annoyance, his eyes so narrowed they're nearly slits.

"Come on," Ronon says, stooping to pick up the unconscious girl. Teyla takes a look over her shoulder and the painting and sighs, and Ronon goes slowly until he hears her footsteps behind him in the corridor. There’s nothing they can do here – he and Teyla can use the Earther’s computers, but they don’t have the first idea of how to interface with the Ancient technology. His preferred mode of interaction is with his gun.

He follows their trail back to the town, a nice developing village with solid stone buildings and a complex set of underground tunnels to hide the women and children from the Wraith. It's places like this that can thrive, if they're smart; it's how Sateda did it, hundreds of years ago.

Teyla deals with the chancellor and keeps an eye on Liannir, leaving Ronon to go to the gate and call in their reinforcements.

Chuck answers the call and Ronon says, "Lorne there?"

 _"What's the problem?"_ Woolsey asks, and while Ronon normally likes the guy, sometimes the unthinking superiority grates. He doesn’t need to inform and delegate, he just needs Lorne and Zelenka.

"Is Lorne there?" Ronon asks again, and waits until he hears Lorne say "here" before he continues. "Bring Zelenka and your paints and brushes."

 _"My what?"_ Lorne says.

"Hurry," Ronon says. "McKay and Sheppard got sucked into a painting."

 _"Ronon –"_ Woolsey starts, but Ronon clicks off the radio channel while he waits for the gate to shut off.

* * *

When Evan gets into the strange art gallery at the outpost, he stops and stares. Every painting is different; some have buildings, others are complex nature scenes. Most are empty. One is a jungle scene, with exotic orange flowers and a sloth-possum hanging down from a branch. The man in that picture looks crazed, face and eyes in a horrifying pleading expression. There's a woman in another picture, one of an orchard, the trees with many types of fruit hanging low and ripe on their branches. The woman is sitting on a pile of fruit, taller than the lowest branches of the trees. Lorne itches to paint over her clothing, to put her in the Red Queen’s colors; she has the regal insanity down pat.

Ronon points him at the one with Sheppard and McKay, a beach picture with clear blue water and green hills. They're on opposite sides of the frame, and for a second things look really strange, like they're weirdly double jointed, their arms at impossible angles. Then he realizes that they're reaching for each other across the edge of the painting. McKay's hands appear on the left side but the rest of his body is on the right. Sheppard is closer to the edge, his body right against it, and his arms are sticking out, above where McKay is tentatively putting his hands into the edge of the painting. A few seconds later, the picture shifts, and both Sheppard and McKay are on the right side of the painting, Sheppard grinning goofily and McKay's looking up at heaven, like he's asking for strength. The painting shifts every couple of seconds so they get snapshots of McKay and Sheppard scoping out their surroundings: Sheppard sticking his hand across the frame again; McKay digging in the sand for something; Sheppard checking out the water; McKay cupping water in his hands and pouring it over the edge of the frame, his expression intent and calculating.

"Try painting something," Ronon says, and Lorne looks at him, surprised. "We had these on Sateda," he says, and Evan has no answer to that except to blink stupidly. He's seen the remains of Sateda, he knows exactly how advanced Ronon's culture was, but it still shocks him whenever Ronon talks about it. "You could paint things into the picture."

Lorne unlocks the tackle box with his oils and unrolls the soft linen bag with his brushes. He picks a small one, something good for detail work, and grabs the black paint. He squeezes a little directly onto the brush and tries a single brushstroke on the LCD display. McKay, standing next to where he painted in one snapshot, is underneath the thin black line the next. He doesn’t seem to notice that anything is there.

"Worth a try," Ronon says, as Lorne wipes it off with a rag.

Each picture has the same panel underneath. Zelenka is careful not to touch any of the buttons as he pries out the section of wall next to it to get at the cables and crystals behind, but it comes loose with a pop and Zelenka accidentally bangs into the controls, swearing in Czech as the painting glows blue, briefly.

"There's a ship!" Evan says, looking at the painting. McKay and Sheppard notice too, McKay pointing at it and Sheppard looking wryly amused. "How did you do that?"

Zelenka squints at the keys. "I think that was an accident."

"Can you do it again?"

"I don't know," Zelenka says. "It’s possible, but I’m not fluent in Ancient." The Ancient lettering is still repeating, but Ronon notices that the flashing is gone.

"Okay," Evan sighs, turning around to look at his team. "Donaldson, back to the gate. We need someone fluent in Ancient and –"

"Loeb," Zelenka says. "And Kwon."

"And Loeb and Kwon," Evan adds.

"Hey, look," Ronon says, picking something up off one of the central consoles. He holds out a long, thin stylus to Evan. "Maybe you _can_ paint something in."

* * *

John keeps his eyes on the ship. He can't tell if it's getting closer or if he's imagining things. There's a limited amount of room in here. He wonders about the perspective; if the ship is as big as it seems at that distance, it might take up the entire picture if it gets close. It’s reasonable to assume that someone's got to be crewing the ship if it's moving, and he doesn't like the idea of that, either.

"Forget about the stupid ship," Rodney says wearily from where he's testing the physics. "See if you can find an internal interface."

John tries to mentally feel out the place from where he's standing so he can keep an eye on the ship, but as soon as he thinks about it, a HUD shows up and _of course_ it's behind him and facing away from the ship. Facing the wall of dark fog.

"Oh, good," Rodney says, and jumps up to play with the display. It buzzes at him. "Hey," Rodney says, and John glances back at him. "It won't let me in. It's asking for identification."

John shrugs. "Maybe only the artist can log in."

Rodney turns on him, eyes wide. "You think this is 3D landscape art?"

John shrugs. The only part that doesn't make sense is the real people. Why not draw the people too, if it's all an art project?

The HUD flashes three times and a message scrolls across it like a gas station sign. "Can you read that?" John asks as it comes by again.

"It's part of their coding language," Rodney says. He tries to touch the HUD again and this time a tiny electric _zap_ makes him pull his hand back and suck on his fingers.

"Let me try," John says, but he gets an even bigger zap, and Rodney translates the new words flashing on the display as something about too many login errors.

"Fine, we'll have to answer them the long way," Rodney says, grabbing a pebble and writing in the sand. WE READ U. NEED USERNAME AND PASS.

He steps to the side and looks out and up to the front of the painting; it's a little dizzying every time John tries to face down the dark fog of the world border; it's vast and completely without reference points.

A message flashes across the screen, in English this time, thankfully. "Working on it. Stay there, trying something."

John herds Rodney over to the shoreline; Rodney sits in the sand while John stands, waiting for whatever's going to happen.

* * *

Teyla is trying her best to be patient with Liannir, but it’s hard; she understands the girl is traumatized, but John and Rodney will be the ones traumatized if she can't get the girl to speak. She looks bewildered to see so many people around her bed; they said she'd been missing for ten days, and it seems unlikely that such a short time could cause such damage unless there is something very bad in the painting.

"Liannir," she says softly, taking the girl's hand. "Please. It is important that you try to remember. What happened? How did you get into the painting?"

Liannir's eyes flick up to Teyla's face and then slide away, like it's too hard to think about it.

"Please," Teyla says. She puts all her persuasion and that little bit of extra she tries very hard not to think about, the bit that’s not all human, into the word, and after a moment the girl sighs unhappily and nods.

Liannir closes her eyes and says, "Water." It's a croaky sound, the sound of someone that hasn't used their voice in a long time. One of the young women hovering worriedly around the room brings a mug and Liannir drinks deeply.

"How long was I gone?" she asks, gulping down the rest of the water but keeping her eyes on Teyla, like a lifeline.

"Ten days, we think," Teyla says.

The girl's eyes crinkle up a little, a rueful but genuine smile. "It was longer for me. It was impossible to mark time – there were no nights – but it felt like two moon cycles. I slept forty-three times."

Teyla's heart drops. If there is a time dilation effect as well as the inherent problem with the painting...

"I found the gallery while I was out exploring," Liannir continues, and Teyla brings her attention back to the girl. "There was a man in the painting. He looked scary, but sad, too."

 _Oh no_ , Teyla thinks. Why hadn't she thought of that? If Rodney and John's entrance into the painting released the girl...

She clicks on her radio. "Ronon," she says. "We have a problem."

* * *

"Tell me about the Satedan paintings," Radek says while they wait for Teyla, Loeb, Kwon, and the translator to make their way back to the Ancient outpost. "Who created them? How did you get people into them? What was their purpose?"

"They were virtual realities," Ronon says, slowly at first. Radek knows he doesn’t like to think of his home; he wouldn’t either, if he were the only one left of Earth. "Created by our greatest artists from the inside out. Of course, our artists and those who wanted to enter the paintings were in kept in stasis pods. The mind entered, not the body." He stops and goes to look at the painting frame. "There," he says, pointing to what looks like a tiny inset camera. "That's where the girl came from."

"Oh no," Radek says, looking back at his tablet. "That's what all this compressed data is."

"What?"

"Not what, _who_ ," Radek answers. "Rodney and Colonel Sheppard. It's not the same as the transporter beam, or the Wraith dematerializer, but it is similar. They are stored as energy patterns, you see? They must be rematerialized out of the painting. There must be a mechanism..." he trails off, deep in thought.

Lorne is tinkering with the stylus on one of the empty paintings, trying to paint in something recognizable. Currently there is a beautiful orchid and a less beautiful sunflower growing in the painting with the field of wheat. "Not that they wouldn't appreciate flowers," Radek says, gently teasing, "but I think something more practical might be in order."

"Just trying to figure out the color variation and mental component," Lorne says. "What would you suggest?"

"Knowing Rodney... how about food?" Radek asks, and Lorne laughs.

"Okay, I'll start with a fruit bowl."

Radek smiles and goes back to his other tablet, the one that’s trying to identify anything in the database that might be human-recognizable passwords on one of the central consoles so they take control of the system.

Teyla comes and hauls Ronon away, dropping off the requested personnel and Martinez, the Ancient specialist. "Above all," Radek stresses before any of them touch anything, "do _not_ touch the paintings! We don’t need more people to rescue." Loeb rolls his eyes; Colonel Touch-A-Lot is infamous in the labs.

Loeb takes over the code search and Kwon and Radek go back to the tablet attached to the control panel. Martinez is there too, and Radek moves so she can see the scrolling display.

"An escape," she starts, then falls silent as the display scrolls. Radek tries not to be impatient; he knows Ancient is an inflective language, like Latin. Martinez has to see the whole sentence before she can translate it. "Ah," she says. "Abnormal release of a prisoner while power was lost." Martinez crouches and scans the rest of the panel, then carefully pries off the section of wall underneath it. It’s covered with small buttons, and she reads the labels off in order. "Food and water; clothes, shoes, and blankets; rain, wind, darkness, and silence; three levels of challenge, and the last button is death. Or perhaps deletion. Those two words are used with remarkable interchangeability in Ancient text."

Radek shudders. "This is some kind of mental challenge?" he asks. "A testing ground?"

"That can kill you?" Lorne asks, and follows up before Radek can answer. "Take a look at this. Apparently the VR doesn't know what Earth fruit tastes like."

Radek moves closer to the painting where Sheppard's spelled out: _tastes like chicken_ -

* * *

The console flashes again and Rodney goes over to read Radek's note. _Teyla thinks there may some time dilation as well._

Oh, great. Rodney goes over to write in the sand. TEST: DRAW/WAIT 10 SECS/DRAW AGAIN

He waits for the first thing to show up in midair, like the bowl of fruit did. It takes a moment, but what looks like a rubber ball appears. Rodney counts, setting a steady 60bpm in his mind, thinking about his metronome marking the half note as he played Mozart's Marriage of Figaro overture. It’s remarkably easy to hear it in his mind, crystal clear.

Forty-three beats later, a baseball bat appears.

Rodney puts his head in his hands. "Forty seconds," he says.

"That's what I got too," Sheppard says. "Damn." Sheppard wanders off to the water's edge, staring out at the ship again. It's something to obsess about, Rodney supposes, but he can't get worked up about a ship that hasn't come any closer in the past two hours.

Rodney writes out 1:4 on the sand and wishes it wasn't such a pain to do. He has so many questions, but they're too complicated to write out shorthand and he doesn't have the patience to write them out longhand, especially in sand. It’s romantic, not practical.

The console flashes. _We’re working on it. Will try a few things soon._ A spike of fear goes through him, but before he can worry about it more concretely, the scrolling text changes. _Lorne is trying to paint you weapons. Any other suggestions?_

Rodney rolls his eyes. The fruit was a disaster, tasting like nothing, texture mushy and unappealing. It’s accomplished the amazing feat of causing him to be completely and totally uninterested in food. He has a feeling that nothing living or with complex moving parts can be painted in unless it can be identified and built by the VR. Not that they'll need weapons; Rodney can't see people on the ship, which hasn't moved in any case. He just shrugs, looking back at the dark fog he imagines the real world is somewhere beyond.

It's already been a couple of hours and he and Sheppard have done everything they can think of to do on the little sand beach. He's ready to rip his hair out, waiting for someone to give him access to the mainframe so he can work on things from this end. He’s not used to sitting idle; there’s always something to do, something to build, or test, or think about. He’s rarely without at least a notebook or a pen. If someone wanted to torture him, this is the perfect scenario. Sheppard pacing in the background is just the icing on the boredom cake.

"Hey," he says, and Sheppard jerks out of his trance to look at him. "They want suggestions for things Lorne can paint in."

"Telescope," Sheppard says, taking the pointy rock they use for writing and spelling it out in the sand. Rodney rolls his eyes, but at this point anything that distracts Sheppard can’t be all bad.

* * *

Tracking the guy released from the painting is ten times easier than tracking the slight girl's path to the outpost. There are swathes of bent branches, footprints on both sides of a stream, and a campfire from where he must have stayed the first night.

It occurs to Ronon that the criminal’s been out for ten days and no one in the town has seen him. He could have circled around wide to the gate and left the planet, or kept traveling away from town, miles away by now. It will take days to track him down on foot.

 _"Ronon,"_ Lorne's voice comes over the comm. _"Martinez says this was a prison. Designed to rehabilitate criminals."_

That makes some of the information slot together better; it also means the guy they're tracking is potentially dangerous, and probably insane, if he'd been left in that painting since the Ancients were alive to guard the prisoners.

"Why does it suck people in?" Ronon asks.

The silence on the other side of the radio stretches out for a while, and finally Lorne says, _"We'll check into that. Anything on your end?"_

"Too big a search for the two of us, if he's ten days gone," Ronon says. "We're going to need a jumper."

 _"Roger that,"_ Lorne says. _"Pick me up on your way back to the jumper and I'll fly you around."_

"Understood," Teyla says, and clicks off her radio. "Let's go," she says, jogging back to the outpost – the _prison_ – without looking back. Ronon takes off after her.

* * *

Evan's glad he's taken up running with Cadman in the evenings, since Ronon and Teyla don't even slow down as they jog past – Teyla simply makes a 'come' gesture at him and he falls into step.

It only takes a couple of minutes to get to the jumper and Evan sets the HUD to enlarge the lifesigns display for a twenty mile radius. He’s not the only one that’s surprised by a large number of lifesigns roughly ten miles the other direction from the Stargate. It’s almost the same size as the first town. The chancellor didn’t mention another town, and since his is closest to the Stargate, they hadn’t thought to ask.

He looks over at Teyla and Ronon; it’s their call if they want to find out more information from the chancellor, check for other tracks, or go straight to the neighboring town.

Ronon shakes his head. "Let’s go. Chancellor’s not gonna be any help now they’ve got their girl back."

"Okay," Evan says, taking off and cloaking the jumper for good measure.

The town is roughly the same size as its twin. The buildings are just like the ones in the other town, tall and narrow in a style common to towns everywhere, and Evan can smell an almost-pig farm from the other side of town. He makes a face; if they spend any time over there it’ll take forever to get the smell out of his BDUs.

He parks the jumper outside town, leaving it cloaked, and the three of them walk through the stone archway with words carved into it that Evan sure hopes mean "Welcome, strangers." He and his team usually have pretty good luck with strange towns, unlike Sheppard’s team, who seem to draw the short straw on every mission.

Ronon takes the lead, hands empty and arms swinging free; he looks casual, but Evan knows Ronon can draw his gun and stun someone quicker than he or Teyla could aim their P90s to take a non-lethal shot.

There are people milling around, but they’re all staying close to the buildings, gathered in small groups and staring at the three of them. Usually there’s some kind of mayor or magistrate or chancellor that comes out to greet them, but no one seems to be stepping up to the plate.

Teyla breaks off to go over to a small group of people; a family maybe, a man, woman and three kids of varying ages. "Greetings," Teyla says with her best smile. "We are –"

Before she can get any further into her sentence, the woman herds the entire family indoors and slams the door in Teyla’s face. Evan’s never seen Teyla strike out before. He’d laugh if it wasn’t about the worst welcome they could get.

The rest of the town is following suit, doors slamming all up and down the street. "We don’t like strangers," someone yells out a window, and someone from higher up throws a rock that Ronon catches like a baseball.

"We don’t like rocks," Evan says with a tight smile. Ronon bounces the rock in his hand a little, like he’s testing the weight. The wisecracker doesn’t reply.

"We are here to help," Teyla says, soothing. "If there is a problem, perhaps we can be of assistance."

No one answers her. Evan’s not thrilled with the idea of going further into town – getting stoned to death in the town square seems like one of those really avoidable types of deaths and it looks a little ridiculous on a death certificate – but suddenly Teyla’s talking quietly to the someone in the building she first approached, leaning down and putting her ear next to the window.

Evan turns to go toward Teyla, tapping Ronon’s shoulder so he follows, and the tense silence seems to go away as they leave the sight of most of the main street. Evan knows small towns – he can almost hear the gossip they’re leaving behind them.

"Thank you," Teyla says, and Evan notices the little stuffed toy the girl had been holding in the corner of the window.

She leads them out of town, Ronon on their six to catch any more stray rocks. "He’s here," she says tightly.

"How do you know?"

"Three townspeople have been killed in the last eight days."

* * *

John stares out at the ship, raking the telescope down the deck and back, looking for any sign of life. He’s not imagining it – the ship is definitely closer than it was six hours ago. He left romance behind a long time ago, but – _pirates_. It’s almost fantastical, except for the part where the ship is coming their way, slow enough to fool Rodney into thinking it’s not moving.

"Sheppard," Rodney snaps. "Will you cut it out? You’ve been staring at that ship for two hours and there’s no one on it."

John doesn’t dare breathe a word about pirates to Rodney, not until he’s seen the Jolly Roger or an eyepatch or a parrot or something. Maybe he can use the baseball bat to measure the relative size of the ship and compare it every hour to show Rodney it’s actually getting closer.

"There are more tests we could try," Rodney says, in an obvious attempt to distract him. "We haven’t done anything with the wall of fog yet."

The wall of fog weirds John out. He hates looking at it, and he’s definitely not going to put any body parts into it. Even if it wraps around like the sides of the VR do, it means they’ll be on the other side of the river, in rolling green hills and potentially miles away and unable to be seen from where everyone is working on getting them out.

"Let’s throw the extraneous stuff in and see what happens," Rodney says, and it’s his enthusiasm that always gets John to do stupid shit like this. "Get the fruit."

They take turns throwing the tasteless apples and pears into the fog. It’s kind of fun, like skipping rocks on a pond. After that’s all gone, though, there’s only the ball, the bat, the telescope, and themselves, and John’s not willing to give up any of that stuff just yet, not even the ball – which he plans to bat back and forth with Rodney if they get _really_ bored.

"We could go swimming," Rodney says, and John does a double take.

"Really?" John asks, surprised Rodney would even suggest it. "What if there are whales?"

"Oh yes, the common or garden _river whale_ ," Rodney says disdainfully. "And while you may be able to sit around in the sun trying to get virtual skin cancer, my brain cells are atrophying from the boredom."

"Oh, well, you can’t afford to lose any of those," John remarks dryly.

"Exactly," Rodney says, missing the sarcasm entirely. "We could even swim over to your ship and you could see up close that no one’s on board."

"Or you could see pirates up close and personal," John returns thoughtlessly. He wishes he could take it back as soon as the words are out of his mouth.

"Pirates?" Rodney says, his big open-mouthed grin telling John he’s _never_ going to live this down. "You think there are _pirates_ on that ship?"

"There _could_ be," John says, trying for crafty. Deep inside, he suspects he’s only hitting petulant.

Rodney picks up the telescope and looks out at the ship, taking a minute to find it on the river. He locks on and John expects he’ll see the same thing John’s seen for the last two hours – exactly nothing.

"Jesus," Rodney exclaims, pulling the telescope away from his face and handing it over to John. "You’re right – there _are_ pirates!"

* * *

Radek’s using three laptops to pull apart the code into adminstrativia, active subroutines, and trash. He knows enough about the way the Ancients wrote their machine code to analyze the subroutines and he’s working on separating the ones that are holding Rodney and Sheppard in the painting, but the administration tables are in the database and need to be translated, so he sends that information to Martinez to see if she can pull up anything useful on the prisoner that was being kept there.

Loeb’s already determined that the usernames weren’t typewritten; they were genetic. He’s trying to find information on how to add McKay and Sheppard to that database but without much luck. Kwon’s ripped apart the control panel of one of the empty paintings, trying to work the circuitry from the inside out. He’s up to his elbows into the wall, and Radek has to admire his willingness to get his hands dirty.

There are six compressed data sets that Radek can identify as prisoners. He doesn’t even need Martinez’s help to figure out which are Sheppard and McKay; they’re the only two in the same painting, and if he needs confirmation, he can run it past the code he pulled from their panel. He spares a thought for the other four people, wondering briefly if they’ve been imprisoned for ten thousand years. That itself is unfathomable, but considering the time dilation, it’s actually been forty thousand years, and the idea is horrifying.

"Dr. Zelenka," Martinez says, calling him over to her console.

"Radek," he absently corrects her as gets up to lean over her shoulder. "What is it?"

"I think I’ve found the files on the prisoners," she says. "Two women, three men."

"We can ignore the women, at least," Radek says. "Can you tell which man is in which painting?"

"No," Martinez admits, "they're listed alphabetically." She gets up and goes to the painting, glancing at whatever they're doing now, probably building a sandcastle. She closes her eyes briefly, and Ancient symbols scroll across the screen. She must be a gene carrier. "That’s the title of the painting," she says, and hurries back to her console. "This is our guy." A small HUD appears like a screen in front of her station, the file of a hard-looking man displayed there.

"Convicted of multiple brutal murders," Martinez whispers, and Loeb and Kwon stop working to stare at her. "Rehabilitated and released. Committed twelve more murders before they caught him a second time. Sentence: rehabilitation or, if judged incapable, death." When she looks up again, her eyes are horrified.

Radek’s hand is on his earpiece before she finishes. Lorne, Ronon, and Teyla need to know this. Now.

* * *

"The woman from the town was speaking of this," Teyla says grimly.

"Shit," Lorne says. "That’s about the worst news I’ve gotten all day."

"We need to see that file," Ronon says into the comm. "He’ll be easier to track if he has patterns."

 _"Oh, he has patterns,"_ Radek says, disgust in his voice. _"You’ll see."_

Martinez’s hasty notes are uploaded to the jumper and Lorne pulls it up onto the HUD for all of them to read. "Ugh," he says when he reaches the end, a sentiment Teyla can wholeheartedly agree with.

Lorne pulls up his picture, and Ronon’s eyes narrow like he is committing the image to memory. Teyla takes a long look as well, though there is no way to know if he will be changed by his years trapped in the painting.

"He could be anywhere," Teyla says. "Where do we start?"

"Where we know he’s been," Ronon says. "Your friend in town should be able to help us."

They return to town, making a beeline straight for the first house on the right. Before Teyla can even knock on the door and the woman she’d spoken to before yanks it open, like she’s been waiting for them.

"Katiya is gone," she cries. "the monster has my daughter!"

"Are you sure?" Ronon asks, looking at the woman sternly. "How long has your daughter been missing? Where did you see her last?"

The woman looks taken aback; Teyla puts a calming hand on her arm. "To be able to catch him, we need this information."

"She..." The woman stutters, looking askance at Ronon. "She went out to play with some friends right after you left. She didn’t come in with the rest of them when we rang for supper."

"What friends?" Ronon asks. "Where were they playing?"

Ronon goes to scout the town square where the kids had been playing while Teyla and Lorne knock on the doors of the children who had been playing with her.

"We were playing twosies," the second boy says. The first one’s parents wouldn’t even open the door to them. "She was mad because she lost three of her best polyack stones so she said she was going to play in the treehouse." He shifts from foot to foot and scratches the back of his neck. "We’re not supposed to play out there alone, but she never listens."

"Where’s the treehouse?" Teyla asks, and the boy points to a broad, leafy tree outside town, easily in sight of most of the houses on the main street. "She didn’t go right there. She has hiding places all over town," he says, and points to an alley half a block away. "She went that way. I thought she was going to get some candy from her secret stash, but she never came back."

"Thank you," Teyla says sincerely, placing her hands on his shoulders. "You have been most helpful."

As she and Lorne step away from the house, she clicks her comm. "Ronon, we have something."

* * *

Rodney takes the telescope back from Sheppard before he can get engrossed in staring at the ship again. He realizes now that it _is_ closer in to shore, and it seems to be moving more quickly now, looming on the horizon.

"What’s the point of having a ship full of pirates?" Rodney asks, not really expecting anyone to answer him. Radek had told him that it was likely he’d accidentally pushed a button when he’d pried off the panel, but Rodney can’t honestly believe there was a button labeled _pirates_.

"Well," Sheppard says, grabbing for the telescope. "Didn’t he say there were three challenges?"

"And one of the challenges was pirates?" Rodney says in disbelief, holding the telescope away from Sheppard.

"Maybe the challenges are self-determined."

Rodney stares at Sheppard for a minute, not even trying to keep the telescope out of his reach. "You _wanted_ the ship to have pirates." He groans. "You _wished_ for pirates with your stupid super-gene and the stupid VR _gave_ them to you."

"Hey," John says defensively. "My super-gene is not stupid."

Sometimes things with Sheppard just go this way, for no particular reason he can see; Rodney wants to shake Sheppard and demand to know if he’s doing it on purpose, or if he’s just _that dense_. "Oh my god, you are twelve," Rodney says. "Now we have to fight imaginary pirates and we have no weapons."

"Oh yeah," Sheppard says. "I thought Lorne was going to draw us some of those."

"Radek said he had to go fly Ronon and Teyla around," Rodney says. "So much for custom offensive capabilities. Do you want the bat or the rubber ball?"

"Look!" Sheppard says, grinning from ear to ear as he turns back to Rodney, twirling the telescope before handing it over. "They’re climbing into the long boats!"

Rodney’s almost glad he doesn’t have a wall handy to bang his head against. "They’re coming to _attack us_ , Sheppard, not to have tea."

"I get the baseball bat," Sheppard says. "It’s more like a sword."

"You do not get to swashbuckle and leave me with a rubber ball to defend myself!" Rodney says indignantly. It was just like Sheppard to keep the cool stuff for himself.

"It’s perfect for you, Rodney," Sheppard says. "It’s pure physics. Angles! Velocities! Force and vectors! Come on, you know you want to."

"If I die at the hands of an imaginary pirate I am going to haunt you for the rest of your natural life," Rodney says. "And then I will follow you to wherever you end up and lecture you until the end of time."

"A fate worse than death," Sheppard says lightly, and for the fifteenth time today, Rodney hates him.

* * *

Ronon is best at tracking in the wild; it’s different skill set to track in the city and as a Runner, staying away from the cities meant fewer people got hurt. He still remembers living in a city, though, and the innate sort of sense of what to look for when you want to find a little place of your own – especially as a child. He gets down on one knee to see the alley the way the girl might have; there’s nothing but another alley at the end of it and he goes there, looking both ways to see if something stands out.

A basement door is propped open, a loose bit of wood stuck under the handle to keep it in place. Ronon goes down the stairs first, flipping his gun to charge it on the way. "Katiya?" he calls, not really expecting an answer, but hoping anyway. He turns into the open doorway, blinking a few times to adjust his sight to the dingy darkness of the basement. There is more junk than he can imagine down here; piles of boxes and pieces of furniture and bags of things stacked on heaps of clothing. There is a path through the chaos but it’s small – not wide enough for him to face forward. He twists sideways to get through without knocking things over. Lorne will have to do the same, but Lorne’s pretty quick, he’ll figure it out.

He winds the through mess, following the path and kneeling down every once in a while to see if there are crawl spaces big enough for a kid’s hiding spot. He stops next to a giant wood desk with a blanket covering the hole where the chair pulls in. When he pulls the corner of the blanket up, he can see several bags attached to the legs of the desk, and one stuck to the bottom of the drawer. He pulls out the nearest one and opens it up. Candy.

"Found one hiding spot," Ronon says, and moves forward a little quicker. They find three candy stashes under more furniture and a bag of polyack stones hidden in an empty barrel.

The path through the junkpile ends abruptly at a back door, not propped open, but not locked, either. As soon as they come up the stairs, they see an small street that leads out of town, a stone lane that gets overgrown with grass at the end. As they clear the buildings, the tree with the treehouse looms in their view. Ronon walks a little faster.

* * *

It’s not going well. Radek is ready to pull his hair out, his eyes reading the same lines over and over again, struggling to match what he’s seeing against what he knows of the Ancient machine code. It’s vastly more complex than anything he’d learned on Earth, capable of rewriting itself and extending its own code when it needs a new function. He suspects it could have passed the Turing test if it wanted to. He keeps at it, struggling with his tired brain to understand.

"Lorena," Loeb says, turning to Martinez and pulling up a bit of Ancient on his tablet, "can you tell me what this word is here?"

"Um," she says, frowning a little. "Sheriff? Marshall? Warden, maybe. It seems to be someone in charge of the prisoners. Why?"

"Because," Loeb says, grinning at Radek, "I think we may have a way to get them out of there." He puts the information from the tablet he’s been scanning on one of the consoles’ HUDs. "It looks like wardens can go in and out of the paintings at will. All we need to do is mark them as wardens and they should be able to think themselves out."

It should be so easy. "How do we do that?" Kwon asks, and Radek’s glad he didn’t have to because he’s not sure he could have done it in English at this point.

"All we need is to attach the label to a bit of their genetic code and submit it for the computer to analyze," Loeb says, as if that’s the easiest thing in the world.

Radek glares at him. "Where are we supposed to get a genetic sample?"

"Atlantis has them for all the personnel," Loeb says, and Radek blinks. Of course. That was how Carson had saved Rodney from ascending. "Great," he says, clicking on his radio. "Donaldson," he says, wondering where she’s keeping herself while Lorne is off with Ronon and Teyla. Probably with the chancellor, he decides. They did still want to maintain relations with the people of Ethera.

"Yes, Dr. Zelenka?" Donaldson answers promptly.

"We need you to get genetic samples for McKay and Sheppard from Atlantis," Radek says. "As soon as possible."

"Yes sir. Should take me twenty minutes if it goes off without a hitch."

Radek’s tempted to ask her to bring coffee. "Thank you," he says, restraining himself heroically. "Please go as quickly as you can."

* * *

Maybe it’s part of being inside the painting, John thinks, but it seems to take a ridiculously long time for the pirates to make it to shore. He thinks it might have to do with the perspective issue, and he almost wants to go hiking in the hills across the way except he worries they might get stuck there forever, marching across the painting and not even knowing you were going in an eternal circle. He looks back at the long boats, slowly rowing their way to shore. Maybe he’s just not good at waiting.

When the long boats finally bottom out and the pirates jump out into calf-deep water, they’re still fifty feet out from the shore. Rodney’s sitting in the sand, throwing the ball up and catching it in his hands, over and over. "I was never any good at dodgeball," he says morosely, but John stopped listening to Rodney’s self-doubt years ago.

The ball and bat aren’t that much of a consolation now, actually, as the twelve pirates coming at them all have raised cutlasses and rapiers. "Look where you’re aiming," John says, taking his own advice as he hefts the bat. "Then throw. That’s all there is to it."

Before he can even worry about it, Rodney throws the ball at one of the pirates and it hits him square in the face. It doesn’t bounce back to Rodney, but it’s close enough that he can pluck the ball out of the water before the rest of them get near enough to threaten him. The pirate falls back, comically confused, and sits down in the water.

"One for me," Rodney says, and if John hadn’t known Rodney had been worrying about his ability, he wouldn’t be able to guess now. He’s practically crowing.

"That’s hardly fair," John complains, taking a batter’s stance as he picks his first target. "You’re using a ranged weapon. You should get penalties."

"Look!" Rodney says, pointing at the pirate that went down from the ball to the face. "He disappeared!"

John scans the oncoming pirates and sure enough, there are only eleven left. "Stop gloating and do it again!"

Rodney throws, but the pirate bats the ball aside and it ends up floating in the water near the wraparound edge of the painting. Rodney takes a step back, glancing around the beach for another weapon, but John’s first customer has stepped up to the plate, and he takes a full swing. The bat connects with the pirate’s shoulder and knocks him off balance. He falls into the sand and just like that, he’s gone. A second guy steps up in his place and John has to parry a swipe of the sword with his bat; the cutlass gets stuck and John rips it out of the pirate’s hands. He swings for the bleachers and when he connects with the guy’s head, the cutlass goes flying into the water, just missing another pirate. Now that would have been something to crow about.

John has half a second to wonder how Rodney’s getting on and panics a little when he can’t see him, although he’s pretty sure he’d hear Rodney complaining even as the pirates killed him. "I'm right behind you," Rodney says tightly, "don’t stop swinging!"

They stayed close to the edges on purpose; they were going to play the switcheroo and hope the pirates didn’t catch on too quickly. He sees the rubber ball floating on his side, a few feet in front of them, ignored.

John brings his bat around in a smooth arc, knocking the next pirate sideways into the ball. It pushes the ball back to the other side just as the pirate disappears into thin air. "Go," John says, as he does a quick count and realizes all eight remaining pirates are closing in on him rather quickly. "I don't want to disappear if one of these guys gets a lucky shot off."

Two more are on him and he pokes at one with the bat, a quick jab to the stomach. The pirate bends over and disappears. The rest of the pirates don't seem to be bothered that they disappear when they go down; either they're the simplest of AI or they're just toy soldiers following a program with no real choices to be made. John's a little slow getting to the second guy, just barely knocking away a slice that might have taken his head off when the rubber ball hits the guy on the shoulder and he disappears.

"Dodgeball!" Rodney yells, and John kicks the ball back to his side of the beach. The remaining pirates look between them, confused, and split half and half. Rodney belts the first of his in the stomach and the ball comes right back to him. John's three are trying to circle him, and he keeps inching back toward the fog so if he has to use the edge of the painting to get away, he won't run right into Rodney.

He parries a thrust and lunges at the pirate with his bat outstretched. The pirate swats it away easily and John has to duck to avoid the swing of the guy next to him. That guy's head snaps forward and he disappears suddenly, and John can see Rodney fifteen feet away, chasing after the ball he's just thrown. These two are the last pirates standing – Rodney must have pulled out something pretty cool out to get rid of his pair so quickly.

John tucks and rolls, swinging for the nearest pirate's legs and taking him down. The last pirate sweeps his cutlass down and John has just enough forethought to get his bat up before he gets split up the middle, and then there's a loud _boing_ and the pirate disappears into the clear blue sky. Rodney's immediately at his side, checking for injuries. "I'm fine," John says, batting his hands away. He's not fine, he's covered in sand, something he'd been able to avoid up until now, but he's not hurt, anyway.

Rodney plops down into the sand next to him, grinning like an idiot. John has a feeling he's wearing the exact same dorky smile. "No thinking about ninjas, now," Rodney says, and laughs. John can't help laughing too.

* * *

They approach the treehouse slowly; if Katiya's in there, they don't want to spook her, and if the convict is, they don't want to give themselves away.

Something catches Teyla's eye and she breaks into a run, her hand to her ear. "He's there," she says in a low voice, right into the radio. It looks like he was hiding in the outbuildings next to the house on the edge of town, not twenty feet from where the girl is ensconced in her treehouse. He's moving stealthily, cautious and slow from one building to the next, and she can only hope he doesn't spot them and make a run for the girl before they get close enough for Ronon to stun him.

She and Ronon are light on their feet; even in all the gear of the Lanteans she's never had trouble being silent. Lorne is a typical Earther, though, not even realizing how loud his footsteps are, how his gun rasps against his tac vest, and she knows he will give them away if they get too much closer. She stops suddenly, putting a hand out to Lorne to keep him from moving. She nods to Ronon, using the Earther's hand signals to indicate the convict’s position, still creeping between one outbuilding and the next. "Stun," she says into her radio, unnecessarily, when she looks at Ronon's gun and sees he's already set it for that. Sometimes he even fools her with his savage barbarian act, and she silently scolds herself for letting him.

She can feel Lorne moving closer to her, slowly and as stealthily as he can manage. She is crouched low, behind the furthest outbuilding, a large square storage unit for grain. She keeps her eyes on the convict, click-clicking the radio when he takes a new position. She doesn't see Ronon for a couple of moves; either he was keeping still to avoid giving himself away or he is even better than she realized. Probably the latter, she thinks, and when she finally spots him, only twenty feet away from his prey, she knows she is right.

The killer starts for the tree, anticipation written in every line of his body. She can see Katiya amongst the branches, her pale face a smudge of white in the deepening twilight. "Ronon, go," she says into the radio. They do not have time to be cautious.

Ronon runs for the man, gun out and aim true. He takes two shots but the man goes down on the first, crumpling to the ground. She runs forward, heading straight for the tree and calling Katiya's name. "Are you all right?" she asks when she gets there. Katiya's backed up on the platform, her face no longer visible to Teyla from where she stands.

"Let me," Lorne says, reaching for a branch and swinging himself up to the platform easily. "Hey, Katiya," he says, soft and smooth and smiling in his voice like only Lorne can. Teyla leaves Lorne to it and goes over to where Ronon turns over the stunned man. He's dirty and grizzled, but it is definitely the man they are looking for. A deep sense of relief floods her and she glances back at the tree to see Lorne playing a hand game with the girl, a sucker sticking out of his mouth.

* * *

Getting the girl back to her parents is actually tougher than getting the prisoner back to the outpost. Evan uses all his tricks, the ones that work on his nephew and niece and Torren and she'll go along with all of them right until Evan tries to climb out of the tree. He's debating whether a stunning blast would be bad for her growth and development when Teyla says, "We know where you hide your polyack stones."

She takes off down the tree like a shot, but before she reaches the ground, Ronon's got her in his arms, and she is giving him an almighty struggle. They deliver her to her parents, Ronon eventually seating her on his shoulders to avoid all the wiggling and leaving the convict to Evan and Teyla to carry.

They drop Katiya off, nod their acceptance of her parents' thanks and cart the prisoner back to the jumper. Evan takes off for the outpost, glancing at his watch. They've been here for just over three hours. That means McKay and Sheppard have been in the VR for nearly thirteen hours. He hasn't heard any more reports of the situation there; he's hoping that means good news, but he knows it's not likely.

When they get back to the outpost, it's a huge mess. Kwon's got the guts of an entire wall panel spread all over one side of the room; Martinez is surrounded by at least five different laptops and working with two different consoles, each with a HUD scrolling information. Loeb and Zelenka have their heads bent over the remaining tablet and are arguing in whispered tones that aren't really quiet.

"Here he is," Evan says, as Ronon dumps him on the floor. "Let's get him back in there."

Loeb and Zelenka both look at Evan uncomprehendingly and Evan picks the guy up by his rough sackcloth shirt. "We put him in, they come out, right?" Evan says. Loeb and Zelenka are still blinking at him owlishly, like he's talking in Esperanto or something, but Ronon understands what he's talking about and helps lift the guy close enough that Evan can touch his hand to the painting.

"Wait!" Zelenka says just as Evan presses the guy's hand to the painting, carefully using his sleeve and not touching skin. The guy is sucked in, poof, gone just like that, and then a streak of black materializes into Colonel Sheppard. He looks around, dazed, and then says, "Where's Rodney?"

Evan looks back at the frame and the little Rodney in the painting is looking horrified. The prisoner is on his feet, holding the baseball bat. "Shit, no!" Sheppard says, and before anyone can do anything, he touches the painting again.

"Stop it!" Zelenka yells, but now Rodney is standing in front of them, looking wide-eyed and scared until he gets a look at Ronon and Teyla. "Sheppard?" he asks, and Evan steps in front of the painting so Rodney can't be all self-sacrificing and go back into the painting, too.

"That's not good," Ronon says, and Teyla runs up to look just as Ronon puts his hand on the painting. Zelenka puts his face in his hands, mumbling incoherently.

The streak of color that comes out of the painting this time is the prisoner, and before anyone has time to react, he grabs Teyla around the neck, yanking her P90 out of her hands. Evan groans, thankful his own team is smart enough to stop touching Ancient equipment when they don't really know what the hell's going on.

The prisoner says something unrecognizable, and Martinez says quietly, "Lower your weapons."

Teyla looks calm, and if there was ever a deceptively bad hostage to take, he's pretty sure it's her. Evan puts his P90 on the floor and raises his hands, nodding at Donaldson to do the same. Evan's still got his sidearm, and McKay does too, he notices, though he doubts McKay would think of using it. Before he can even try to do something stupid like draw and shoot the guy while he's holding Teyla, she stomps on his foot, slipping out of his grasp and side-stepping out of his grip when he bends over. She knees him in the face, hard and Evan's pretty sure she breaks his nose.

He falls backward awkwardly, catching his head on the metal toolbox Evan keeps his painting supplies in. There's a sickening crack, and when Teyla kneels next to him to check his pulse, she shakes her head.

* * *

It takes Rodney half a minute to take everything in – Teyla’s already disarmed the bad guy before he’s even really aware that he’s no longer in the painting – but the first thing he does is grab the nearest tablet, eyes skimming random information about prisoners and discarding it for the next one in line.

"Rodney, over here," Radek says from where he's sitting on the floor with Loeb. "We knew how to get you out, we were just about to finish the coding and test it. We can't do it with Ronon in there."

Rodney looks up and the entire room is staring at him. "Don't look at me!" he says. "I am _not_ going back in there. Just do whatever you're going to do for Sheppard, and I'll get Ronon out."

He can hear Radek muttering in Czech, but he knows better than to take his complaints seriously, and he can hear the bone-tiredness in his voice, anyway. He's probably been working on this since they got sucked in there and his tiny little pea-brain is about to overload.

Loeb explains something about tagging Sheppard as a warden so he can think himself out of the painting, and Rodney looks up briefly, about to ask why they can't just do that for Ronon too. Before he can ask the question, Loeb holds up a vial of blood. "Genetic sample?" Rodney asks instead, and Loeb nods.

They're quiet for a while after that, all the noise coming from the other side of the room where Teyla and Lorne are dealing with the prisoner's body and cleaning up the place. Loeb finishes whatever he's working on and says, "Got it!"

He scrambles up and goes over to the tablet they've got interfaced with the Ancient keypad under the painting and types something in. Nothing happens right away, and when Loeb looks up at the painting he asks, "How long does the message scroll?"

"It scrolls three times and then disappears," Rodney answers. "Why?"

"Because..." Loeb looks embarrassed. "They're swimming."

"What?" Rodney asks, knees creaking as he gets up off the floor to take a look at the painting. There are two piles of clothes on the beach, and he can see two heads sticking out of the water in the middle of the river. They're staying well away from the ship, but still – sometimes Sheppard is a complete moron. And he expects better from Ronon.

"There is only one problem," Loeb says, drawing Rodney's attention back to the issue at hand. "Someone has to replace Ronon, or he'll be stuck there forever."

"Why can't Sheppard go back in to get Ronon out, and then think himself out?"

"He'll be recognized as a warden; going into the painting won't displace the prisoner, it'll just allow him to come and go freely."

"That system makes no sense," Rodney says, and Radek puts up a finger from where he's leaning against the wall with his eyes closed.

"It's a malfunction. Something short-circuited. Kwon thinks it might have been a lightning strike."

"Oh," Rodney says. "Well, let me see what you've got." He goes over to Kwon, picking up his tablet on the way and hooking himself into the Ancient interface where Kwon is half sitting inside the wall, looking eerily like the Lantean version of a growing hive ship.

"I've separated out the data storage units and the administrative functions," Kwon says.

"So it’s just a matter of –"

"Yes, and if you –"

It takes another forty minutes to actually make it work, and then another ten to finally get Sheppard to notice the scrolling message on the HUD. Of course he thinks himself out without any trouble, appearing in the middle of the room like he'd been standing there all along. Rodney hates him.

They have to manually program a release function and Rodney checks it for the twentieth time just to be sure – that's his teammate in there, zero percent data corruption has never been more important – and it's all a little anti-climactic when Ronon shows up in the center of the room, not even a little off-balance.

"I'm hungry," he says, and Rodney's stomach growls loudly in agreement.

"I'm exhausted," Radek says, yawning.

Rodney stretches his arms overhead. "I had a nap on the beach. After playing dodgeball with pirates." It was practically a vacation, as these things go.

"Too bad you missed the swimming," Sheppard says, looping an arm around his neck and steering him toward the door. "Let's get out of here. Woolsey can send Teldy's team back to negotiate with the Etherians and babysit the prison gallery."

"I agree," Teyla says, giving Rodney's arm a squeeze. "Let's go home."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [](http://the-wanlorn.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**the_wanlorn**](http://the-wanlorn.dreamwidth.org/) for beta and general awesomeness, to [](http://lavvyan.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**lavvyan**](http://lavvyan.dreamwidth.org/) for help with ideas and cheerleading, and most of all, thank you to [](http://pajamas.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**pajamas**](http://pajamas.dreamwidth.org/) for the lovely artwork inspiration; this wandered a little off my original premise, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. Written for the 2011 [](http://sgareversebang.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://sgareversebang.dreamwidth.org/)**sgareversebang**.


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